


The House on 4th Street

by awkwardkermitfrog



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Creepy Story, Haunted House, bet, scary story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 22:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11564931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardkermitfrog/pseuds/awkwardkermitfrog
Summary: There’s a haunted house that locals say no one has made it a night in. Rhett bets Link fifty bucks that he can stay there, and not only that, he’ll bring him back something from the house to prove it. Link agrees to the terms of the bet, leaving Rhett to face the consequences of his hubris. I’ll go ahead and tell you now this one is probably kinda long.Read on AO3.





	The House on 4th Street

I want to begin this by telling everyone I’m not crazy. Honestly. I’m not. Or I didn’t think I was until what happened last night. I’m not so sure anymore. Whatever happened... it’s a lot to explain.

I don’t think Link is going to believe me when I tell him this. Okay, let me back up. Link is my best friend. We’re college students at North Carolina University. Halloween is coming up, so I started looking into some scary things we could do. Link isn’t a fan of it though. He says that he’s got better things to do than make himself feel scared. I love it. I live for this kind of thing - or I used to. I don’t really think I’m going to be going out of my way to do anything scary or even watch a scary movie for a long time after this.

I’m an idiot, really. I was looking up haunted stuff in my dorm room with my roommate, Link, and not coming up with much besides your run of the mill “haunted house”, when he said that he knew of a haunted house, I should’ve walked away from the conversation or at least changed the subject. But, stupid me, I didn’t. I just let him talk.

Link said that there’s this house on 4th street that no one can stay the night in. I asked him why, and he said, “Well it’s haunted.” I kind of laughed at him. I think ghosts are interesting as an idea, but I’m not sure I believe in them. 

I said, “Betcha I can stay in it.” And then I stupidly followed that up with, “I bet you fifty bucks I can do it, and I’ll take something from the stupid house just to prove I did!”

That’s it, that right there is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And after reading this, I hope you’ll see why and never, ever go into a haunted house just to prove a point. I don’t care if you don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t care how you feel about the supernatural. Don’t. Go.

I am going to tell you what happened next in the most detail that I can remember. I don’t know if I will ever forget it.

Two days later, at twilight, I found myself with a sleeping bag strapped to my back standing outside of the house on 4th street. From the outside, it looked like a normal, unassuming house. Its paint was peeling, its windows were broken… just looked abandoned. Link was standing there, waiting for me to go in. He had agreed to camp out in a van outside to make sure that I kept my end of the bargain. I remember thinking as I walked up the steps, listening to Link’s teasing, that the rope on the tree in the front yard put a shiver up my spine. Then I thought that was stupid. Ropes aren’t scary.

I opened the door to the house to find a living room. There were two doors branching from it. The ceiling was low enough that I couldn’t help feeling that I was going to have to walk hunched over if this kept up. I’m a tall guy, and I’m not a fan of low ceilings. I looked around the room and observed one old couch, a fireplace, and a whole lot of dust. There wasn’t much to this room. The dare didn’t say that I had to go all around the house, but there wasn’t anything in this room that I could take back to the guys and prove that I’d stayed there, except a couch cushion. Thinking it unwise to take an entire cushion back with me, I set my sleeping bag down on the floor and decided to take a few minutes to explore the rest of the house.

I went to one of the two doors and found that it was locked. Thinking it unwise to break down said door, I went to the second one. It opened with a slow creak, which emphasized the eerie feeling of the location, and into a parlor. I ducked under the door and stepped through to see another rather ordinary room; a dining set, a china hutch, and a chandelier, but everything just where you’d expect it. I turned to look outside but found that the window that I had seen from the street wasn’t there. 

“Strange,” I muttered. I figured I must not have gone into the room I thought I’d walked into, at least from an outsider’s point of view. I continued to look around the room, my hand still on the door handle. Nothing jumped out at me. A few spiders scuttled across the abandoned dishes that sat neatly at the dining room table, but not much else happened. I saw that there was another two doors that branched off from this room. That seemed strange, as this room would have to be at the edge of the house, and one lead to what looked like another room towards another edge of the house. I decided to instead go through the door that appeared to lead back into the house, figuring the door that went further to the side of the house was probably a staircase, and I wanted to explore the rest of the house first. As I walked through the door, I made a note that I had left the door to the dining room open, and then proceeded to duck under the door frame and walk into the next room.

This room was another parlor, the old fashioned kind you read about in old books. There was a white couch with a large stain on it, which I’d rather not speculate about. A book case was covered in dust as well, with a few books here and there. In front of it were pages and pages of books and bindings that had been torn apart, ripped open and destroyed. I remember thinking that this room was odd, and it was the first room where I felt a shiver go up my spine, the same sort of shiver that had crawled up my backside when I saw the rope in the front yard. I felt very uncomfortable in the room, and had a sick, sinking feeling, the sort of feeling you get when you stand up too quickly but you haven’t eaten enough. I wasn’t in a rush to get out of the room, but I didn’t want to be in there any longer. I turned to go back into the dining room, but looking I saw that the door to the living room was shut. 

“What the hell…” I walked over to the door and tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. I shook the handle. “Ha ha, Link!” I said sarcastically. “Very funny! You can come out now!” I stood there, waiting to see Link burst through the door grinning, or pop out from under the tablecloth. I waited there, hearing my own voice echo off the walls, but there was no response. Neither of these things happened. In fact, nothing happened. 

I had left that door open. I know that. I distinctly remember doing that. That door was left open. At the time, I figured maybe there was a breeze from a broken window, or the house was settling, or some other bullshit. Looking back though, and knowing what I know… I just know I left it open. 

There was no choice but to go on into the next room from the parlor

Looking back now, I can see what the house was doing. Please don’t think I’m crazy, but I could swear that there aren’t ghosts in that house. The very wood of its floorboards is haunted. With what, I don’t know, and I don’t know that I want to find out. I just know that what I experienced there transcended my knowledge of the supernatural and opened up a whole new world of questions, questions I don’t have the answers to. The house wanted me to go through it. It wanted me to explore, it wanted me to go in deeper. It did not want me to leave. I wish I’d seen it. I wish I’d broken down the door, found a window, yelled. But I was determined that the house wasn’t going to get to me, and so I was determined to brush off the door incident. 

Stupidly I walked back into the parlor and up to one of the two doors - this one leading back, further into the back of the house. I opened it, and it gave a creak, almost as if saying hello. I ducked through the doorway and came into what I can only describe as total, complete darkness.

I heard the door behind me swing shut.

Panic set in quickly. You don’t think about the kind of terror that total darkness can create, because we’re rarely in it, but it is mind numbing. My only thought was to get out. I turned behind me to find the door handle, but it wasn’t there. I pounded my fist on the wall until it bled, and then I hit it again, jumping back from the pain that was searing through my hand. I turned back into the room, as slowly as possible, unable to even see my own hands in front of me. It was pitch black, blacker and darker than any darkness I had ever experienced. I stood there for what felt like hours, breathing shallow breaths, afraid to step forward, afraid to step backward. I put my hand behind me to guide me to the wall, but found that it wasn’t there. Nothing was behind me. Nothing was in front of me. I began to question my very existence, standing there in that darkness, the silence pressing into my eardrums, my own heartbeat quiet against the persistent, loud nothingness. I reached forward, blind, taking small, panicked breaths, certain that there was nothing for me, nothing left to find. I stumbled forward, tip toeing, inching, for an immeasurable amount of time, until I finally felt wood under my fingertips. I gave a tiny laugh, relief washing over my body as I carefully felt around for a door knob. When I found it, I turned it as quickly as I could and burst through into the next room, falling on my knees. The house didn’t wait to be polite this time; the door simply slammed shut behind me, and I was glad to be rid of it. 

For a few minutes, or maybe even thirty, I just sat there on my knees, breathing hard, feeling like I could breathe again. I could hear my own breathing again, which allowed me to take big gulps of air like a fish thrown back into a lake. I reached my hands out in front of me to make sure they were still there, still attached to my arms, and clapped my hands just to make a sound. I was afraid to speak, afraid my voice wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I slowly looked up to see what room I was in. 

It was the living room, but with two major differences: the front door was missing, and the door that had been locked earlier was open. 

I blinked several times, confused. How did I get here? I walked up to the window to see the van was still outside. I tried to open the window, but the damn thing was painted shut and wouldn’t budge. “Fuck…” I muttered. 

Link was sitting on the front of the van, eating something.  I waved at him, but he didn’t look up. I pounded on the window, yelling. I continued this, hitting the window, hearing the glass reverberate, but Link didn’t look up. He simply sat there, eating whatever it was he was eating, the street light illuminating his pale face. I hit the window again, yelling as loudly as I could, but instead of even looking at the house, Link hopped off the front of the car and went around to the back of the van. I shook my head, stepping away, conflicted. I turned to where the front door had been, where just solid paneling stared back at me now, and looked it up and down. The door handle wasn’t there. The whole door just wasn’t there. It was like the housing had morphed or something. I felt along the wall, every crack, every crevice, and came up with nothing. The wooden panels just stared back at me, taunting me with silence. Hadn’t this window been broken when I walked in? It was solid now, trapping me inside, refusing to yield to my banging on it. I couldn’t remember if it had been broken when I came into the house, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was. Frustrated, and scared, I turned towards the other door, the one that was open. 

I shouldn’t have gone into the house at all. I shouldn’t have gone through that first door. I shouldn’t have gone through the second. And I definitely should’ve just stayed in that living room, or retraced my steps through the darkness, done something differently. The house was toying with me. I know that now. It was playing with me because it could, because it liked it. 

I didn’t know what to do, except to move forward. I didn’t bother with searching for other doors - the only one in the room was the open one, anyway, and I didn’t feel like letting it get to me. It was starting to get to me, but I just felt like I had to try to push forward, I had to at least try. 

I went into the next room, completely unprepared for the strangeness that I was about to be met with. 

The room was full of mirrors. They were all over the walls. Old fashioned mirrors, new mirrors, small mirrors, large mirrors, square mirrors, oval mirrors - just mirrors, mirrors everywhere. I was met with a ton of reflections of myself, a hundred small faces peering at me, my green grey eyes reflecting off of every surface, my tall frame warped here and there. 

I walked up to a large oval mirror, one that was fitted with a beautiful ornate silver frame, and looked at myself. I was tall as ever, stocky, my hair was still sticking up like it had been earlier that day. The house hadn’t gone as far as to toy with my reflection. I ran my right hand through my hair and gave a little “hm” before I saw it; two bright blue eyes, glasses, and black hair, staring at my reflection, looking up at me. 

“Whatcha doing there, Rhett?”

I jumped, whirled around, and looked behind me, my heart pounding like it was going to jump six feet forward out of my chest. Nothing. Link wasn’t there. I stared around wildly, not wanting to even blink. I took a deep breath to soothe myself and closed my eyes, not wanting to look at any more mirrors. It was a few minutes before I opened them. When I did, I found reflected in one was a door, an open door. I walked towards it, eager to escape from this place, but hesitated at the doorway. It was there, waiting for me, open just enough to be open, but closed enough that I couldn’t see inside. I don’t know how long I stood there, the room full of mirrors around me, reflections seeming to flicker. I don’t even know how many of them followed what I did, and I don’t care to find out, even now. I stood there wondering when the house would end again, when it would let up, when it would let me outside. I didn’t care about the money any more. I just wanted out. 

With a heart full of hope that this door would be my answer, I pulled it forward, swinging it open, and stepped into the next room. It shut behind me before I could grasp where I was: a garden. 

“What the hell…” I looked around to see trees and perfectly trimmed rose bushes. In front of me were hedges in the shapes of animals. It looked quite expansive. From what I could tell about the layout of the house, I should’ve been in another room, not some garden - but then, I reminded myself quietly, this house didn’t follow those kinds of rules. 

I stepped onto the grass, uncertain of what was going to happen. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen. I turned around, back to the door, to see that it too was gone, replaced by foliage and vines. Was I really outside? I looked up to see the moon, high above me in the sky, clouds rushing by. I felt the breeze blow against my cheek and let out a small laugh; I was outside, I was outside. 

“Ha!” I turned back to where the door had been, where there were only leaves and vines now. “You tried to trap me, but then you led me here! What are you trying to do, house?” I laughed, holding my stomach, throwing its taunts back at it. “What are you trying to do!” 

For several minutes I laughed, but then my breathing slowed and I calmed down. I waited for a response, but there was no door. No house. No response. The house knew it was getting to me, attacking my pride, my ego. When I was satisfied it didn’t have anything to say back to me, I turned towards the garden and began to walk through.

The garden was lovely, but there was something strange about it. Something off. You’d swear I’m crazy - if you haven’t already - but I felt like I was being watched. Every tree felt like it had eyes, eyes watching me, waiting. Big blue eyes. I turned towards one, suspicious, trying to throw the house off guard, but there was nothing there. I shook my head and turned back to walk down through the garden. I looked at the hedge animals and observed that they, too, felt like they were following me. I turned towards one on my left, confused, as it hadn’t moved. I turned to look back at the door, assuming it was far away from me - but it wasn’t. I hadn’t moved an inch. I had walked and ended up in the exactly same place. Just as I was absorbing this bit of information, I heard him.

“Rhett!” 

Link’s voice, coming through the trees, through the bushes. I stared in the direction of the voice, unsure what to do, unsure what to make of it.

“Rhett!” Link’s voice yelled again, calling out to me. “Rhett help me!” Then it was followed an agonized scream of pain.

“Link?” I started to walk towards the voice, started to run, not caring if I fell. I jumped over bushes and pushed past shrubs, I felt branches hit me in the face, but I didn’t care. Link’s voice was yelling for me, screaming even. Something was wrong. Something that was happening to him was wrong. I jumped over a log, blinked - 

and saw that I was exactly where I started. 

I stood there, bewildered, gasping for air. I was just running. Running people move! I have long legs, I can run pretty well. But I hadn’t moved even a bit! Again, I had just stood there in place. Gasping for air, I heard it again, Link’s voice, yelling for me. The house had Link. I had to get him, I had to save him. I collapsed to the ground as Link’s screams went on, begging for me, begging me to help him, and then proceeded to crawl along the ground, to crawl through the bushes, covering myself in dirt and scratches, trying to get the screaming out of my ears, until a doorway appeared in front of me, open and I shoved myself through it.

The door shut behind me. I laid there, panting, unsure what to do, unsure what to even think. I didn’t have long to think, though. The house wouldn’t let me. A light swung around overhead, distracting me from my worries, and I looked up to see a chair. In the chair was Link.

“Link?” I asked, sitting up. “Link, are you okay?”

Link didn’t answer. His eyes were caved into dark circles. I noticed a lense on his glasses was broken. His face was pale and clammy. I noticed that a trickle of blood was coming from the corner of his mouth. 

“Link?” I asked again, inching towards him. “It’s me. It’s your buddy Rhett.”

“I know who you are.” Link’s voice sounded drugged, slow. He looked down at me, his intense eyes staring, hatred embedded in his stare. 

“Link… Link buddy, we gotta get out of here.” I stood up and walked to him, kneeling down so that we would be at eye level. “Link, buddy, we gotta go. We have to get out of this house.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“What?” I shook his shoulder, but he was unresponsive, un-moving. “Link cut it out! We have got to go!” 

“You didn’t save me.” Link’s voice was quiet. It was deeper than before. It was as if there were something sinister in him, burrowed in his throat. “You didn’t save me.”

“Link, I honestly I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I looked at him, my eyes wide with worry, the anger gone from me. Anger would be of no use here. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that you didn’t save me!” Link yelled, suddenly standing up, his voice growing deeper. It sounded almost inhuman. “You didn’t save me!” Link repeated, in that voice that almost wasn’t his own, in that voice that was growing more gravely, more inhuman. “I was screaming for you, Rhett! And you didn’t come!” Link collapsed into the chair, into sobs. “You didn’t come.”

I stepped away from him, looking at him more closely. Something was wrong. His eyes, which had been brilliantly blue, were dark and grey. His hair was grey instead of its usual black. His skin was turning from white to grey as well. It was as if he were a colored photo that lost colored ink cartridges halfway through printing the paper. He looked up at me, now grinning, with grey teeth and a grey mouth. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t Link. It was… something else. 

I looked around him, to a door that was shut. I had to try and get through it. The light above us swung back and forth, casting two shadows. But then I looked again - Link had two shadows. I had one. The chair had one. But Link - or not Link - had two. I gulped, attempting to swallow my fear and my pride. “Link, I’m sorry. But I have to get through that door.” 

Link’s smile didn’t waver. He only watched as I crossed the room and opened the door. I shut it behind me, watching him the whole time, as he neither moved nor spoke, the blood still trickling from his chin, eyes following, his whole frame growing less and less saturated with color by the second.

I was glad to shut the door behind me.

I turned into the room and saw that I was in a bedroom. The house was playing normal again. I looked at a dusty bed covered in a moth eaten blanket. I turned to the window and looked outside. I could see the van from here. I have no idea still how I got upstairs, but I could tell it was from a second story window. 

“Link, you out there buddy?” I whispered, putting my hand to the glass. I stood there for several minutes, and then looked around the room for something I could take back to him to prove that this had really happened. At this point I don’t know if I needed to prove it to him or myself more. I had the distinct feeling that I was losing some part of my sanity, some part of my normalcy. 

Around the room there were many things; stuffed animals, a diary, a sewing kit, to name a few. I picked up the sewing kit and rifled through it, trying to be as quiet and undisturbed as possible. I couldn’t help but feel that the house probably wouldn’t let me take something precious from it, so I took a thimble out of the kit and put it in my pocket. I figured that the house could afford to lose a thimble. I then looked around the room, looking for a door. The room didn’t appear to have any doors. The one I had come through was gone. 

I turned to the window and waved at my reflection, which of course, waved back. I felt silly, waving at myself in a window like this. I raised my other arm, and so did the reflection. I put my arms down and sighed. This was the most peaceful the house had been so far, besides at the beginning. I turned away from the window, but then stopped. My reflection wasn’t turning with me. 

I frowned and watched. My reflection waved the right arm, as I had done, but this time without me. It waved its left arm. Then it turned around to see something - a shadow of something - and was tackled to the ground. I stood there, shocked, taking small breaths, too frightened to be sure of what I was seeing. What could I trust was real in here any more?  

My train of thought was interrupted when I heard a deep breath, a snort, like one a wild boar might take. The message from the reflection was clear to me. I couldn’t turn around. I continued to listen to the breathing as it got closer and closer to me, finally warm in my ear. I could feel the heat on my neck, smell the animal, or whatever it was. Terror shot through me like heat. Normally my response to fight or flight is fight. I felt some fur brush against my arm. I looked back at my reflection, at the window. In it there was only this beast, standing on its hind legs, something like a bull with the feet of a goat. I shuddered, completely frozen. If I moved, surely the beast would attack. If I stayed, he may attack anyway. My options seemed limited at best. I hadn’t even seen if there was another door out of the room yet. Fear gripped every muscle in my body, every fiber of my being. The creatures fur brushed against my ear, and a deep voice, one like the voice Link’s had become in the prior room, began to whisper in my ear.

“Rhett, you shouldn’t be here.” 

It said it over and over again, whispering in my ear, its jaws reflected in the window, where my body was now absent. My own reflection wasn’t anywhere to be seen; just this beast, this monster, standing behind where my reflection should have been standing, its mouth red and snarling. “Rhett, you shouldn’t be here.” That deep voice, that voice that wasn’t remotely Link’s any more, that voice of the creature that had stolen my best friend’s voice for its own. “Rhett, you shouldn’t be here.” 

I stood there, frozen, barely daring to breathe, barely daring to do anything. I thought about it: there were no doors in the room. No ways out.

Except the window.

I don’t know how long we stood there, its voice in my ear, surrounding me, telling me I wasn’t welcome. I don’t know what the creature was. I believe now, looking back, that it was a demon, some agent of the devil, and that it possessed the whole house. It liked prisoners while they amused them, as I had amused it in the garden. I hadn’t done what the house wanted with the Link impostor. The creatures breath was on my neck, and the room was getting colder, so much so that I had trouble gathering my thoughts. What did the house want me to do? I would do anything to get away from that room. But each room had been worse than the last; I didn’t want to move forward either. I came to realize though, as the voice got louder, burring down in my ears, into my brain, that I couldn’t stay here, I couldn’t stay. I had to go through the window. I had to fall into the yard and call off the bet. 

With every bit of strength I had, I jumped forward, crashing through the glass, escaping the room and escaping the demon.

I didn’t fall far. Instead of falling from the second floor, as expected. Instead I hit a floor. I gingerly sat up, crawling up from my knees. I watched as blood from my nose hitting the floor dripped down and made little splats on a wooden floor. I was in another room somehow, another room in this god forsaken house. I blinked back tears; what the hell did this house want from me? I couldn’t very well go back, there wasn’t a way to go back. What do you do when hell is the direction forward? 

I turned to look behind me and saw no window, which was no longer a surprise. I had to move forward. 

I looked up at the new room, not sure what to expect. It was a simple room. There was a chair in the center, like there had been in the not-Link room. This time it was empty. The light above did not swing, but rather stayed stationary. I looked around it and saw my own shadow on the floor... and another shadow. There were three shadows - one from myself, one from the chair, and one from something else. 

It was unnatural to see a shadow like that, a shadow without a source. I stood up, ginger, picking bits of glass out of my T shirt and noticing small cuts on my arms and legs. I also noticed scratches and dirt from the garden were still present. The house was toying with me, playing with me, like a cat might play with a mouse. It was unsettling and my stomach felt like it was full of acid from the anxiety it was causing. I saw a door on the other side. Quickly I crossed the room, my eyes always following the shadow that had no source. I was eager to simply move on and get out, so I opened the door and walked into the next room. 

I shut the door behind me and looked around. I was in the parlor. This time, though, there was someone on the couch, someone who was very lanky and tall, someone with spiked blond hair. Someone who looked like me. But it wasn’t me, it couldn’t be me. It couldn’t be me. I stood there, my hand on the door handle, unsure what to do, unsure what to think. 

The me on the couch was crying. It was kind of sad to watch tears roll down my face like that. I stepped forward, and the other me didn’t react. He just sat there, crying, letting tears roll down his face and onto the carpet.

“Hey... hey?”I asked. What does someone say to themselves?

“I didn’t save him.” Other Rhett said quietly. “I didn’t save him.”

“Okay... who didn’t you save?” I stepped forward gingerly, taking my hand off the door handle, walking closer to my dopple-ganger cautiously. I had a feeling I knew the answer.

“You.”

I stopped in my tracks. “What  are you talking about?”

“I brought us here. And there’s no way out.” Other Rhett looked up at me and I saw that unlike the other Link, his eyes weren’t turning grey, and neither was his skin. He really looked like me. I was sitting there, another me, another flesh and blood me was just sitting there, tears rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. “There’s no way out, Rhett.”

“No.. there has to be.” I glanced around the room and looked for a door. As usual, the door behind me was gone. I didn’t see a door anywhere in the room either. “A door always appears.” I said, mostly to myself. I looked back at other Rhett. “There’s always a way out.” 

Other Rhett didn’t start grinning the way other Link had. He simply sat there, tears rolling gently, staring up at me with my own grey green eyes. “No. There isn’t.” He looked back down at the ground. “The only way out is down.”

I immediately noticed that I was sinking. The floor was acting like some strange sort of cartoon quicksand. I looked around myself and saw that the floor was distorted, the floorboards bending and swirling around me. I yelled and tried to pull my foot up, out of the ground. I was suddenly up to my waist in it, in the floor, in this strange gravitational pull. “Hey!” I reached for other me, for myself, but other Rhett didn’t move. He barely even blinked. “Hey!” I yelled again. I was up to my shoulders in it. I clawed at the floorboards, trying desperately to stay above ground, trying to find a way out. The floor was sinking up to my eyes. The last thing I saw was the other Rhett, and I could swear he was smiling, just a little. 

I fell. I don’t know how far. I don’t know how long. It was like being in total darkness again. This time I could hear the rush of air around me. I could feel the wind whistling through my clothes. I could have fallen for a lifetime; everything rushed by me, images of who I am and who I’ve been, images of my friends and family, all around me, going by like film on fast forward. I couldn’t scream; I was too busy looking at everyone I knew, everyone I had ever known. There was so much to take in, so much surrounding me, that when I closed my eyes and opened them, it took me a few minutes to realize that I was looking at the top bunk of the dorm room from my bed. 

I sat up slowly, very, very cautious. I went over to the window and saw that it was evening. Kids were walking across campus in back packs, not a care in the world. I opened my window and looked out, hollering, “Yeah, college rocks!” I wanted to see what response I’d get. 

A girl from below looked up and saw me - a friend of mine, named Amber. “Rhett, what are you doing?” She laughed at me. “You loon!” 

I grinned back at her and ducked back inside the room. There was air. I looked at my door. It was there. I opened it and walked down the dormitory hallway, taking in the carpet, the walls. I ran my hands along the paint, laughing. I wandered around the whole floor, saying hi to friends, a huge weight lifted off my chest. It was a dream. All of it was some horrible, horrible dream. The bet, the house, everything. The weirdest thing is that I can feel a thimble in my pocket. 

I opened my computer to type up the dream, and that brings us about to now. The thing that makes me think I’m not free is that Link just walked in. And his eyes are grey. 

And he won’t stop smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> @linkslipssinkships prompted me to write about Rhett’s passion for haunted houses. So here goes.


End file.
